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Author(s)

A I. Norman, Wenhua Zhang, Kathryn L. Beers, Eric J. Amis

Abstract

A small-angle light scattering (SALS) apparatus, coupled with a specially designed microfluidic device was used, to monitor the structure of a diblock copolymer in aqueous solution. The closed-face design was fabricated between glass slides using a UV-curable optical adhesive. The device design incorporates multiple inlets, a chaotic mixing system to reduce the mixing length, and a viewing window to perform on-line SALS. Mixing of each component is tested using polystyrene latex microspheres. Vesicles of the block copolymer, EO6BO11 in aqueous solution were formed on the SALS chip and the pair distance distribution function was determined using an inverse Fourier transformation to quantify the population and distribution for a range of vesicle sizes. These experiments provide demonstrations of using high throughput SALS on a chip as a screening tool to optimize processing conditions for a range of polymer solutions.